One of the many scandals of this modern world is the disenfranchisement of the Fat. In the US about 60% of the population is overweight, many indeed are quite evidently obese, and yet there is no chance that this majority will be able to elect one of its own to be President. All the current serious candidates for President are from the lean and hungry minority with ne’er a fatty to be seen. It is all very odd and I scent a skinny conspiracy.
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| Grover Cleveland |
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| Howard Taft |
It was not ever thus. Resolute
Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th President, in H L Mencken’s phrase “sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite”. Grover tipped the scales at a solid but hardly excessive 250lb (17stone 12lb to us Brits) and the Americans embraced judicious 27th President
Howard Taft, a colossal 332lb (23stone 10lb). 31st President
Herbert Hoover was no stripling either but his texture was (Mencken again) “not that of the Alps, but that of chocolate éclairs” as the Depression struck. If politically the Americans have slimmed down, here in Greece we have two notable fatties:
Evangelos Venizelos, erstwhile finance minister and new leader of leftist PASOK, must be 22 stone and has the mien of an ill-tempered toad. Yet he is tiny beside the gargantuan veteran Deputy Prime Minister
Theodoros Pangalos, who has no discernable duties but who terrorises his colleagues because he knows where the bodies are buried. Pangalos always reminds me of the huge diner
Mr Creosote, played by Python Terry Jones, who stuffed himself gluttonously before messily exploding; whereupon
maitre d’ John Cleese presented the bill. If you hear a loud bang outside the Greek cabinet room, you will know what has happened.
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| Evangelos Venizelos |
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| Theodoros Pangalos |
In Britain we have our fatties too.
Winston Churchill himself was pinkly rotund and liked the good things in life. Accosted by, some say
Bessie Braddock, but more likely Nancy Astor, with “Winston, you are very drunk!” he replied “Possibly I am. But you Bessie/Nancy are very ugly. Tomorrow morning, I will be quite sober, but you will still be very ugly!” Bessie Braddock was a Liverpudlian socialist firebrand and was one of those sizeable and formidable political battleaxes once common in Britain like
Dame Irene White and
Gwyneth Dunwoody. Of the current generation, my best fatty hopes used to reside in well-upholstered
Nicholas Soames, grandson of Churchill and hate-figure of lady Labour MPs for his sexist banter, but an amusing fellow nonetheless. Sadly his first wife has damagingly revealed that making love with Nicholas was “like having a large wardrobe falling on you with a small key still in it!”
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| Bessie Braddock |
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| Nicholas Soames |
There have of course been some less-than-admirable fatties. The
Emperor Vitellius insisted on at least 4 large meals a day, podgy and begloved
Cardinal Wolsey was lucky to escape the axe; pot-bellied
Napoleon Bonaparte threw Europe into chaos, even if the French unaccountably revere him. The less said the better about boasting
Benito Mussolini (“the bullfrog of the Pontine Marshes”) or sinister
Herman Goering - he who had two but they were very small, as the rude wartime song went.
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| Billy Bunter |
I much prefer the genial fatty of fact and fiction.
Billy Bunter, the Fat Owl of the Remove, always raises a laugh and most Scots will recognise
Fat Bob, bosom pal of Oor Wullie, cartoon mainstay of Dundee’s Sunday Post.
Fatty Arbuckle became a byword for plump good nature on the silent screen and monocled
Charles Coburn was a splendidly florid feature of 1940’s comedies. Best of all, the world laughed with gentle
Ollie Hardy in his madcap adventures with Stan Laurel.
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| Oliver Hardy |
Back to the real world, there is a wise adage that you should never borrow from a thin banker and I have always been, er, um…a well-fed customer. My ideal bank manager would resemble Germany’s former Chancellor
Ludwig Erhard, a flop at the top job, but a brilliant Economics Minister for the first 14 years of Germany’s renaissance, with just the right mixture of generosity and prudence, in short an admirable fat man. I believe the Fat are the life-enhancing Salt of the Earth.
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| Ludwig Erhard |
SMD
23.03.12
Text copyright Sidney Donald 2012
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